Her schizophrenia drove her from Crosby to the streets of Galveston, where her grim prediction became real. Two teenage girls discovered Sultan’s battered, partially clothed body in an abandoned Galveston house last week.

Homeless women like Sultan and two others police believe may be victims of the same assailant are a group that is especially vulnerable, social services officials say.

Hurricane Ike crippled many of the social services that could have helped homeless women like Sultan, often drawn from surrounding counties by Galveston’s normally greater range of services.

Galveston police believe that whoever killed Sultan, 56, also bludgeoned to death Evelyn Joyce Harvey, 51, on Feb. 5 and savagely beat a 46-year-old woman during a sexual assault on Jan. 17.

The three attacks occurred within blocks of each other.

Police are awaiting lab tests to determine whether the slain women also were sexually assaulted.

Sultan, Harvey and the woman who barely survived an assault were different in many ways, but all spent much of their final days on Galveston’s streets.

Sultan, who suffered from delusions and heard voices, left her trailer in Crosby and came to Galveston in November to find work, said her sister, Carolyn Bingham of Crosby.

Population doubles

Bingham periodically sent her money, but Sultan eventually ended up on the street. Police said she was hard to approach and unfriendly.

Harvey was addicted to cocaine, said her husband, Harold Sellers, 52, of Galveston. She rode the streets on her bicycle and often slept in Sellers’ car because the landlord refused to allow her in the room her husband rented at a boarding house, Sellers said.

The last time he saw her alive she was talking to friends in front of a convenience store, he said.

The assault survivor, whose name is being withheld because she is a sexual assault victim, often spent the night with her boyfriend, 65-year-old Timothy R. Allen, in his room at the Gulf Breeze Housing Development.

Allen said he had to sneak her into his room at night because the Galveston Housing Authority had banned her from the premises. He said that the night of the assault she left him to walk to a nearby hamburger restaurant a short distance from where she was attacked.

The three women were part of a homeless population that more than doubled since Hurricane Ike inundated the Texas Gulf Coast on Sept. 13.

The Gulf Coast Homeless Coalition reports that it counted 592 homeless in Galveston County during a January census. That compares with 267 counted last year in Galveston and Brazoria counties combined, said Ray Leitschuh, coalition chairman.

As homeless women, the three victims were part of a population that is particularly vulnerable, said Carolyn Rose, director of administrative services for the Gulf Coast Center, which treats mental health and substance abuse problems.

“They probably have a higher level of assaults because of the situation they are in,” Rose said. “They are more likely going to be prey.”

Homeless women would normally find shelter at the Salvation Army, but the building was damaged by storm water and will open Monday for the first time since Ike, Maj. Elda Flores said.

“For women not to have the Salvation Army to go to, they are at high risk of running into this individual who is killing them,” Leitschuh said.

Police hope the survivor can identify her attacker, who may have slain the other two women. But they have been stymied by privacy laws.

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